Connecting Veeam Backup and Replication to Server 2016 Hyper-V

I love Veeam Backup & Replication and use it often for backing up and restoring VMs on Hyper-V servers. While I have used Veeam for years, and have used Windows Server 2016 since way back in TP0 release, I had never tried to combine the two until today.

I recently built out a new Windows Server 2016 Datacenter running the Hyper-V role and have started building VMs on it, so thought it was about time to start backing those up. I have the latest Veeam Backup & Replication software – version 9.5 – and had read that it fully supports Server 2016. However, when I tried adding my new Hyper-V server to the Veeam console, I kept getting denied at “Detecting previously installed components”. This is the message I was receiving:

“Network path not found, or invalid credentials supplied”

I knew my DNS name was right, and that my credentials were valid. So I figured it must be a firewall issue. This Server 2016 was an out-of-the-box build, with Windows Firewall enabled and running, and with all default ports being allowed or denied. After a quick search, this document was discovered that lists a number of ports and ranges that need to be allowed between the Veeam backup server and the Hyper-V host server: https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/hyperv/used_ports.html?ver=95

Now unfortunately, the way the table is formatted combined with my not paying very close attention resulted in mis-reading the information listed under Ports required for deploying Veeam Backup & Replication components. Rather than doing 135, 137, 138, 139, 445 for BOTHTCPandUDP, I instead configured my Hyper-V server’s firewall to accept traffic from TCP 135 and 137, and then UDP 139 and 445. I even remember thinking “Hmm, weird that it needs 445 on UDP but not TCP”. Doh.

The answer? Read the document more carefully! Here is the full list of ports that need to be allowed inbound on the Hyper-V server when tapping your Veeam backup server into a Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V server:

TCP
135, 137, 138, 139, 445, 6160, 6162, 6163, 2500-5000, 49152-65535

UDP
135, 137, 138, 139, 445

Once I had the correct ports being allowed inside WFAS on my new Server 2016, Veeam went through and connected right away!

I hope this helps out someone who might find themselves in the same boat!